A few weeks ago I visited my parents back home in Ireland. While I was there something historic happened: I took part in my very first road race.
It was a minor local affair known as the Rás Raon, comprising a single lap of a short course set amid the drumlins of rural County Down. Still, as my dad drove me to the starting line you could feel the tension crackling in the air. Actually that may have been the car radio, but it was still exciting.
I’m currently halfway through David Millar’s excellent book, Racing Through The Dark, and if you’ve read any sporting biographies you’ll be familiar with the stock formula: young neophyte enters small-time race in the sticks, blows away the local opposition without breaking sweat, is taken under the wing of grizzled ex pro, gets the girl, the glory, corruption, redemption and a book deal, before retiring into TV punditry.
Unfortunately, the script didn’t pan out that way for me. Not only did I fail to win, but I finished quite a long time after the race winner. Fifty years later, actually. Give or take a few seconds.
I had a cold at the time, so I wasn’t too disappointed with the result – and in hindsight, the fact that the other competitors had set off before I was born is also some consolation. More galling was my inability to beat the course record.
The Rás Raon was originally run in the 1960s as an annual event organised and contested by a group of local teenage friends and neighbours, alongside a full programme of sporting events. It was a kind of local Olympics, in a way, with family rather than national pride at stake. My dad had mentioned it before, but caught my interest when, over a cup of tea, he produced a faded old school jotter in which as a budding young sports reporter he’d documented the results of the annual races.
I soon found out that while the Rás Raon may have been a local race for farm lads riding battered steel beaters, it wasn’t without its share of skulduggery. No doping of course, but my dad recalls an out of towner showing up one year on an exotic machine equipped not with the regulation single speed, but a full three gears.
Two local brothers, in an attitude to technological innovation worthy of the UCI, decided something must be done in the face of this foreign threat. One provided a diversion on the starting line while the other recalibrated the upstart’s derailleur with his boot. The upshot: an unfortunate technical failure in the first few metres, and a result of DNF. None of this is mentioned in my dad’s report, which merely notes, in scrupulously neutral tones, that the prankee was the first rider in the race’s history not to finish. Talk about a media whitewash...
Luckily for me, on my futuristic steel eight-speed, the cranky bros were nowhere to be seen as I set off on my flying lap. The course record according to my dad’s archives was 13 minutes 25 seconds. I was quietly confident and set off in a high gear. Dodging puddles and an oncoming tractor, I creaked up the only hill on the course, the Bull Ha, and sped down the other side. And then, a spanner in the works – the course looped back, crossing a main road, and I was forced to pause for what felt like minutes to let a shoal of cars pass by.
Racing back to the start point, my Garmin passed the 13 minute mark as the finish line came into sight down the road. My dad was waiting with my uncle, stopwatch in hand and running commentary in full flow. ‘He’s ….not going to make it!’ I heard him shout supportively as I sped past and braked to a halt by the hedge. And sure enough, although my moving time was bang on 13.25, my course time of 13.41 was a full 16 seconds behind some 14-year-old riding a postman’s bike in hobnailed boots.
The course is now on Strava, in case anyone wants to take it on. Suffice to say, I will be back for another attempt at that record!
Oh yes, sportives
My first sportive of the year is the Puncheur in a couple of weeks. With a paltry 311 kilometres in my legs this year I’m not expecting great things – but then again, if I finish within 50 years of the first-placed rider I suppose I can consider it progress.
Felix watch
Good news for Felix fans, he is back in the UK! Inspired by Abby’s amazing Wiggo mask last month, I am working on a Felix English version which I hope to have ready in time for the Puncheur. I’ll let you know if it boosts performance, or if I just get arrested.
